N.B.: This post will hypocritically complain about Sherlock spoilers while simultaneously containing Sherlock spoilers. Away with you if you haven’t seen up to the second episode of the third season.
Before We Get to Sherlock, Let’s Talk About Community
Hmm, this seems like an unrelated topic. I wonder where I’m going with all this.
But hear me out: Community is a fine show, to be sure. But it’ll never work its way into my (cold, possibly absent) heart the way the best of its NBC brethren (i.e. 30 Rock) has. Why? Because it insists on being a comedy with heart, only it keeps hitting the same emotional beat over and over again. Far too many episodes boil down something threatening the friend group, and the group deciding that, yes, their friendship is more important than whatever was threatening it.
This was effective in the beginning, where there really was a transition from a randomly assembled study group to a real circle of friends. But a couple seasons in, they were still affirming their relationships. And a couple seasons after that, they still are.
Think I’m wrong? Take this season’s premiere. The Community characters are not even a study group anymore. They’re people who legitimately know each other outside of school. And yet, something threatens their friendship: Jeff manipulates the rest of the group into suing Greendale. And he almost gets away with it…until he decides that, yes, their friendship is more important than his professional success. (Have we seen this episode before?) And instead of suing the school, he convinces them all to re-enroll in it, and re-form the study group.
It just gets emotionally repetitive.
Now, to Complain About Sherlock a Little
I’m still not talking about “The Sign of Three” yet. Just go with it, because you love my roguish qualities.
I watched the previous two seasons of Sherlock on Netflix. I saw the first episode of the first season while Jesse was out of town, and decided it was so good that I’d wait for him to come back, make him watch it, and continue the season with him. The second season came and went on the BBC, and then came and went on PBS, and then finally came to Netflix, where we watched it at our leisure. At no point was I subjected to spoilers.
Sometime in between the second and third seasons, something changed. Now there are bits of Sherlock information floating around in the ether, ready to spoil me at a moment’s notice. Not only that, it seemed like everyone downloaded the episodes as soon as they hit the BBC, so I had to be worried about being spoiled for a show that hadn’t even aired in the United States yet. My choices were these:
1) Be like everyone else and download the episodes, and either watch them on a screen of sub-optimal size or on my regular TV but of the sub-optimal watching-a-web-video-on-my-TV quality.
2) Watch the episodes on PBS, and cross my fingers that a) the downloaders won’t spoil everything and b) PBS didn’t cut the episodes down, as they did the previous two seasons.
3) Wait until the season comes to Netflix, where I can once again watch the uncut episodes at my leisure. Resign myself to knowing everything that happens before I get to watch it for myself.
I went with Option No. 2, and it seems to be working out. The episodes don’t look like they’ve been shortened, and I’ve only been spoiled for minor things. But, obviously, I resent having to make the choice. We only get three Sherlock episodes a season, people. After they’re done, who knows when Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman will be available to shoot another season together? I wanted to spread the episodes out and make the season last as long as possible. Instead, I feel pressured to blow through the entire season in three weeks, and wait however long to blow through the next season in three weeks, and so on.
This is just another example of how…
Fans Are the Worst
I should be more specific. When creators listen to their fans, it’s the worst.
Not to go off on yet another tangent, but the big, archetypical example of this—at least around the SportsAlochol.com office—is the Veronica/Logan relationship on Veronica Mars. They’re so much more interesting apart than together, and yet fans somehow bullied the show into keeping them together for longer than was useful.
For a more relevant example, think back “The Empty Hearse,” the season premiere of Sherlock. What was the worse thing about it? If you’re like me, your answer probably has something to do with Anderson—especially his little club of people speculating about how Sherlock is alive. I’d say the worst moment was the imagined Sherlock/Moriarty kiss. It was an elbow-to-the-ribs kind of joke, and it was so, so cheesy. The club is clearly a stand-in for Sherlock fans, and the kiss was total fan service. Did that moment deserve a guffaw, a laugh, or even a chuckle? Sherlock should be better than that.
Which Brings Me, Finally, to “The Sign of Three”
I know—I took a roundabout way of getting to the point. Kind of like Sherlock’s interminable wedding toast in “The Sign of Three.”
I’m not saying I hated the episode. All Sherlock episodes are good. I enjoyed the lighter tone of “The Sign of Three” (“the elephant in the room”), along with the clever way the seemingly unrelated cases he mentioned all came to bear at the wedding. I especially adored Sherlock’s drunken deductions. (“Egg? Chair? Sitty thing?”) My problem wasn’t even with the notion that the cases hinged on two people not feeling fatal stab wounds, though I found that kind of unbelievable.
No, my problem was with the excess of gooey emotion between Watson and Sherlock. (I know, I know: monster, no heart, etc. Send all hate mail to rob@sportsalochol.com.)
The idea that Sherlock is a damaged sociopath who is only redeemed through Watson’s love is one that should be used in the show very sparingly. In “The Sign of Three,” it was overused. So many moments were there just to make you go “awww.” We get the mushy parts of Sherlock’s Best Man toast. We get the flashback to when Watson asks Sherlock to be his Best Man, and thus affirm that Sherlock is his best friend. We get Sherlock’s heartfelt violin-playing for Watson and Mary’s first dance. We get Watson saying, “She has completely turned my life around. There are only two people who have ever done that.” (Clutch your hearts, non-monsters who still have them!) And we get the sad way Sherlock slinks out of the wedding, even though he loves to dance, because he has no one to dance with—despite the fact that people don’t really dance exclusively as couples to fast songs at weddings, and no one was dancing with Mrs. Hudson. Manufactured emotion, Sherlock!
If all of these “awww” moments weren’t enough, it all comes after a season premiere that ends with a big, cathartic speech about Watson’s feelings for Sherlock—a speech that starts with Watson saying how hard it is to talk about his feelings for Sherlock. To me, it seems like he actually can’t shut up about them.
It’s not that I’m totally disinterested in these kinds of emotional scenes. I found the end of “The Reichenbach Fall,” the last episode of the second season, to be hugely moving. Watson’s speech at Sherlock’s grave got me, man. I had Feelings-with-a-capital-F. I still do when I think about it. But I only found it so effective because scenes like that, up to that point, had been so rare throughout the series. I’m afraid I’m going to become numb to them.
That might be the goal for some people. It’s clear that, for some fans, reveling in the Watson/Sherlock relationship is the main appeal of the show. But Sherlock should resist, because giving fans what they want is the quickest way to ruin something. If Sherlock pauses every episode—possibly multiple times an episode—to reaffirm that the friendship between Watson and Sherlock is more important than whatever is threatening it (Moriarty, marriage), it’ll stop being great. It’ll be Community. (Look! All the threads came together, just like I planned from the start.)
Conclusion: The tenderness of the Watson and Sherlock relationship is like salt. A little bit of it brings out the flavor of the entire thing. Too much leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Also, she is totally not a dude!
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Just like to say that option #1 is incomplete; you also could have downloaded big hi-res HD versions and watched them optimally on your HD TV. (If you were a monster who downloaded things WHICH I WOULD NEVER CONDONE.)
Also, we’re cool.
Hmmm, there might be a disconnect in how “one” could watch the shows and how *I* could watch the shows. I feel like every time we watch something that’s been downloaded, it looks like we’re streaming Netflix but not getting all the dots/HD. I need a lesson.
Oh, and I’m glad we’re cool 🙂
Kind of agree. Even though I am easily manipulated and was moved despite myself.
Kind of agree. Even though I am easily manipulated and was moved despite myself.
Me, too. I was just mad about it at the same time.
I liked the episode a lot, especially the wedding-toast structure and accompanying misdirection (which I should have seen through but did not) about whether there would be an actual mystery solved in this episode, BUT I do kind of agree with you that a little bit of flame-fanning (PUNS!) goes a LONG way. In the first episode, it’s sort of off to the side with that character as a stand-in for fans (kind of pointlessly, but amusingly). But in the wedding one, it’s like the show forgot they’ve broadcast all of eight episodes (albeit closer to the length of 16 network episodes) at this point. It felt like they were paying off 40 or 50 episodes of mostly-unspoken tension/feelings instead of like, a handful (especially since these feelings have actually come up before).
And most of it worked anyway, because it’s a pretty great show. But yeah, I don’t think that making fans squee is actually the highest form of craft.
“And most of it worked anyway, because it’s a pretty great show.” This is true. All Sherlock episodes are still better than most of what’s on TV.
I do love your roguish qualities and I agreed with a bunch of this even though I loved this episode. The Watson/Holmes love-in has been a pretty straight line from the end of The Reichenbach Fall to The Rule of Three. I would argue, however, that it is earned. Even though there haven’t been a ton of episodes, they are long and spend a good deal of time on characterization for such plot-heavy mysteries. Also, if the seasons themselves are few and far between, I’m fine with paying some things off sooner rather than later. Odds are they don’t have a ton of seasons left.
The one real quibble I have is that I think the real kicker on that joke in The Empty Hearse was more skewering fan service than fan service itself. I thought the scenario was funny, but I found the cut to the girl defending this premise to be funnier. I mean of course it was intentionally silly! I guess the question here is one of intent from Moffat.
I’ll end this with #TeamPiz to remind you we’re on the same side.
#TeamPiz 4 Life!
I don’t understand why sportsalcohol.com is constantly misspelled throughout this article. Is that an inside joke?
ONOZ! You found my weakness.
If all the SportsAlcohol people have “Mod” by their name, does that mean they are all Mods. In that case, I’m a Rocker or a Mocker. (cf. Hard Day’s Night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEI2UUhVEn4)